| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: chance for promotion, it seems--aye, a stove boat will make me an
immortal by brevet. Yes, there is death in this business of
whaling--a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into
Eternity. But what then? Methinks we have hugely mistaken this
matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow
here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at
things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun
through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air.
Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take
my body who will, take it I say, it is not me. And therefore three
cheers for Nantucket; and come a stove boat and stove body when they
 Moby Dick |
The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from The Vision Splendid by William MacLeod Raine: he was capable. Go to Billie Gray, the notorious ballot box
stuffer! Take orders from the little rascal who had shaved the
penitentiary only because of his pull! James saw himself doing it.
He was sore in every outraged nerve of him. Never before in his
life had anybody sat and sneered at him openly before his eyes. He
would show the big boss that he had been a fool to treat him so.
And he would show P. C. Frome and Ned Merrill that he was a very
valuable man.
How? Why, by fighting the corporations! Wasn't that the way that
all the big men got their start nowadays as lawyers? As soon as
they discovered his value Frome and his friends would be after his
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